Man On The Form

In the middle of the twenties there was a jazz band at the College named the Gold Coast Orchestra, whose stock cornet was a lad named Sargent Kennedy '28. Twenty-three years later, College jazz was in the hands of a group with a shorter name: the Crimson Stompers. But Kennedy still dropped around to take a few licks at rehearsals. The only difference was that Kennedy was then Secretary of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Registrar of the University--highest position in the administrative hierarchy presently held by a member of the Reunion Class.

Kennedy's personality and appearance have not grown portly with his position. Classmates remember him as an "outdoor sort of chap" with a ruddy face a ready smile, and distinct evidences of a North Shore accent. He remains that way today. Through diverse and intensive enjoyment of athletics, he has managed to keep a remarkable physical state. His late forties show only around the temples.

As Registrar, he is official housekeeper for deans and professors, doing the routine jobs that keep a large university going. He assigns rooms for classes and examinations, administers exams and rules of the Faculty. This drab but necessary work is administered with an easy kind of efficiency that quickly wins the affection of his all-women staff. Although by the nature of his position, he must dispense red tape, but he is no admirer of it: one of his proudest achievements has been simplifying the form-filling procedure students must go through to register.

Kennedy could sympathize with these students because of the signatory tasks he has himself. He must sign almost every important record and document (but not degrees) that students need to officially be students. Every time he signs Kennedy records the fact on a little clicker on his desk. In a recent academic year, he saw the total rise to five thousand seven hundred and thirty-one. He quickly bought himself a signature stamp.

After his 1928 graduation, Kennedy took both an engineering and a business masters degree at the University, and in 1940 became an assistant dean in charge of sophomores. In his class report of about that time, listed "fishing for bass" as his outdoor hobby. But his outdoor interests have become less, not more sedentary over the years, in remarkable contrast to old clubhouse dictum ("when thou become forty, thou shalt play nothing but golf"). A couple of years ago, he took up ski racing, careful to protect himself with short or "goon" skis. "I used to ski on the long ones, but I was breaking my ankles. Haven't been injured since I took up the goons." Basketball is his winter indoor sport, usually pursued on a team with prominent members of the Class of '27 whom Kennedy refers to as "old crocks."

In spring, Kennedy plays tennis and also shortstop for an administration nine.

But this week, the Kennedy family has special plans. Even though he has seen 25th Reunions come and go during his sixteen years of affiliation with the University, Kennedy is going to get to all the events he can. And on Thursday, he will watch his son, Frank, graduate from the College. But when the week is over, and his classmates have gone home for a long, quiet recuperation, Sargent Kennedy will probably be donning sneakers so he can get some real exercise.